Thinking About You

This paper brings into focus the idea that just as no third-personal way of thinking could capture the self-consciousness of first-person thought, no first- or third- personal way of thinking (or combination of the two) could capture the especially intimate way we have of relating to each other canonically expressed with our uses of ‘you’. It proposes, motivates and defends the view that second-person speech is canonically expressive of a distinctive way we have of thinking of each other, under a concept that refers de jure to its addressee and whose availability depends on standing in a relation of interpersonal self-consciousness with another.